


Portrait

by tvfanatic97



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: F/M, Friends to Lovers, Idiots in Love, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-02
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2019-07-23 15:29:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16161716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tvfanatic97/pseuds/tvfanatic97
Summary: When MJ develops intense feelings for Peter she uses drawing and painting as an outlet for her feelings. Meanwhile, Peter similarly uses photography as an outlet for his own feelings for MJ.





	Portrait

**_MJ_ **

 

MJ wouldn’t say it happened all at once. Falling in love- woah, pause and rewind-  _developing a crush_  on Peter (that’s better)- was a slow, gradual process that had snuck up on her. Like a small continuous water leak that goes virtually unnoticed until enough water to flood your belongings has gathered as opposed to the floodgates being opened and water gushing out all at once; that was a terrible analogy, especially considering that MJ was well read and an excellent writer herself but whatever, romantic feelings for one curly-haired selfless dork were uncharted territory for her and she didn’t know how to express those feelings coherently.

It was this lack of knowledge on how best to proceed or deal with her feelings that lead her to drawing portraits of Peter in his various states and on different mediums. From simple sketches on paper to painting him on canvas and one notable time, etching his portrait on an acrylic etching plate that had cost her $50- but that was following a rare occasion where her feelings had overwhelmed her after he saved her cat as his spandex-adorning alter ego and she needed an outlet to express those feelings.

 _Woah_ \- pause and rewind, again.

If she had to pinpoint the moment the water leak that is her crush on Peter Parker probably started, she’d point to Elementary School. On one particular occasion, her memories for what the occasion was evade her, all of them had to come dressed as Disney princes and princesses and she’d chosen to come dressed as Princess Leia. Not because she had anything against traditional animated princesses, she loved them actually, but the only other black girl in her class had already announced that she was coming as Tiana meaning that option was gone for her and as were the other classic Disney princesses so she’d settled on Princess Leia at her massive Star Wars fan parents’ suggestion. She was pleased with her costume and had been excited to go to school on that day until her bubble was burst by one Kelsey Smith who had immediately commented on how MJ “didn’t really  _look like_  Princess Leia” as soon as she stepped foot into the classroom.

Elementary school MJ was not as outspoken and ready to defend herself like high school MJ was now and so she didn’t know how to respond to that comment, this also being the first instance her physical differences had been pointed out, and just stood there frozen. It was one nerdy Peter Parker, who was coincidentally dressed as Han Solo even though the character was neither a prince nor a princess, that spoke up on her behalf simply declaring: “Princess Leia isn’t real Kelsey, anyone can be her” to the other girl before walking away but not before throwing a smile towards MJ that made her cheeks warm.

From then on the crush grew and it didn’t help that they went to the same Middle School after Elementary School then subsequently ended up at Midtown High together.

Although MJ mainly kept to herself at school, in middle school she couldn’t help but take note of how Peter always seemed to defend anyone being bullied and would put himself between the bully and the other person to take the brunt of their hitting. One notable example was when they’d started Middle School and one of the older kids made a nasty comment about Peter’s best friend Ned’s weight to which Peter had told him to “back off” in his squeaky little voice. The bully and his friends has responded in kind by shoving Peter into one of the lockers but MJ was observing the whole thing and had gone forward to help Ned to get him out of the locker.

The stupid, selfless dork continued his selfless, standing up for the little guy routine all throughout middle school with no care for the physical violence his 5”0 skinny frame suffered as a consequence. Each time he was either shoved into a locker or large cafeteria trash can or a urinal in the boys’ bathroom, MJ was there along with Ned to help him out and he always graciously accepted their help with an easy, wide smile like he was proud of himself.

It was this continued selflessness and the resultant smile he gave her as she pulled him out of whatever he’d managed to get himself shoved into that day that made MJ realise she may have had a little crush on one Peter Parker.

This being her first ever crush she didn’t quite know what to do or how to handle it and this was what marked the start of her sketching habit.

She already had a penchant for art and drawing especially with her mom being an illustrator so it only made sense that this was the medium she chose as an outlet for her feelings. Anytime she was on the receiving end of one of Peter Parker’s trademark smiles and she felt heat rising in her cheeks or her stomach churn weirdly she’d quickly bring out her sketch pad and draw a picture of him so all her focus was on drawing him and she wouldn’t be tempted to confess her feelings or anything equally dumb.

The sketching carried on for as long as Peter was a selfless dork who was quick to stand up for others and to smile reassuringly when his friends would come to help him after he was used as a human punching bag- read  _forever_ , it carried on forever.

Okay, forever was dramatic but it certainly carried on well into high school. As her crush on him grew, she started drawing more and more elaborate sketches of him including him as a fairy prince, him as a knight in shining armour, him as The Princess Bride’s Westley and so on (MJ read a lot of fantasy novels during her freshman year of high school hence the running theme in her drawings). She was constantly sketching him to the point where it was becoming burdensome, she couldn’t stand to be around him anymore and she also didn’t want to risk him catching a glimpse of her sketches and be weirded out, so she put a bit of distance between her and him by sitting at the opposite end of the table at lunch.

However, her distance relative to him didn’t seem to be a factor in her crush as she soon found herself constantly thinking about him even at the weekends when she was at home far away from him. This is what triggered the oil canvases of him she’d do over the weekends, locked up in her room away from the prying eyes of her parents who’d no doubt question her about the subject of all the drawings and paintings if they saw.

Truthfully, sketching portraits of Peter as various characters or in various emotional states she’d seen him did nothing to help calm her growing crush. If anything it somehow made it worse but she knew deep down that the sweet, kind Peter would never go for a moody, closed off girl like her when he probably liked girl next door, homely types that were the complete opposite of her.

So she settled for observing him from afar for reference for all her various portraits, waiting out the rest of high school till she could go to college and hopefully find a new guy to obsess over.

 

* * *

  ** _Peter_**

 

Peter had garnered quite the collection of cameras over the years. From his very first old-fashioned Polaroid camera that Ben had gifted to him for his 13th birthday, to the very expensive film camera left to him following Ben’s death, to the fancy digital camera with an array of lenses May had saved up for and bought him for his 15th birthday- his first birthday after Ben’s death, to the various cheap, single-use disposable cameras and of course the camera of his cell phone.

Ben had worked as a freelance portrait photographer, with most of his work being done at their small Queens apartment so it was only natural that Peter picked up photography as well. He carried on his photography habit after Ben’s death, using it as a way to feel close to him when he was gone, and so he was always with camera, taking pictures of anything that fancied his eye. The thing that fancied his eye happened to mainly be one Michelle Jones which was-  _unexpected_.

He should probably start from the beginning.

They had a dress up day in Elementary School where Peter had insisted on dressing as Han Solo despite the theme quite explicitly being princes and princesses. May had kindly tried to explain this to an adamant Peter, but young Peter was stubborn and May and Ben were incapable of saying no to the boy so he’d gotten his way and gone as Han Solo.

So imagine his delight when he walked into class and saw one of the girls in his class, Michelle, dressed as the Princess Leia to his Han Solo. Young Peter Parker felt giddy at the sight, and it wasn’t until much later that Peter would come to realise the significance of this moment.

That initial giddiness quickly faded when he heard another one of his classmates making a disparaging comment about how Michelle couldn’t be Princess Leia when she didn’t  _look like her_. The comment made Peter’s stomach rise with disgust and he knew he had to say something so he’d marched over and given the girl a peace of his mind then thrown a small shy smile to his Princess Leia before walking away.

The Han Solo/Princess Leia costume coincidence was just the beginning of Peter’s realisation that a lot of his and Michelle’s interests seemed to intersect. All throughout elementary and middle school he’d always catch her engrossed in a comic book or graphic novel that he himself liked, her face cutely scrunched up in concentration, though anytime he pointed it out she’d deny that she was a nerd like him and shove the offending book into her backpack.

As Peter grew he found that he had a penchant for getting himself into trouble by stepping forward and putting himself between bullies and their intended victims. It was a purely instinctual reaction on his part, it made him sick to see anyone be picked on and each time he had to bare witness to it he found himself stepping forward to defend the victim before he could even think about it or stop himself. He ended up taking a lot of beating for his troubles but Michelle’s exasperated smile as she reached a hand out with Ned to help him up afterwards always made it worth it. It was a truly juvenile kind of way to impress your crush.

And  _God_ , did he love her exasperated smile.

Each time it was directed at him, though Michelle probably intended for it to be chastising, Peter’s heart would leap in his chest and heat would rise to his cheeks almost instantaneously. And given his aforementioned penchant for getting beaten up, he found himself on the receiving end of this smile on a near-daily basis.

It was taking its toll on his poor heart and he didn’t know what to do about his ever-growing feelings. So he figured with one of his loves being photography and the other being MJ, he could maybe combine the two then it would help him focus on something else lest he do something stupid like confess his feelings to her and ruin their friendship.

So that was how it began. Ned and MJ were already aware of his photography hobby so it (hopefully) didn’t seem weird that he now started bringing one of his many cameras to school and would spend a large proportion of the day just taking pictures of the two of them. That’s a lie, he spend most of the day taking pictures of  _just_  MJ.

He’d initially attributed his giddy, almost-childlike response to MJ as being caused by her smile alone and so he was glad when she put a bit of distance between herself and him and Ned. With her sitting at the opposite end of the lunch table to him and Ned, it would theoretically mean he wouldn’t be on the receiving end of her smile as often as he’d been before when she used to sit and hang out with them.

However, that distance and the lack of the smile that came with it did nothing to calm Peter down. Proving to him that his feelings were most likely not just related to her smile but rather to MJ herself, distance be damned.

If he put a fraction of thought into it, the sheer number of his photos that would be of MJ once he got each roll of film developed or he was going through his digital photos was probably quite creepy so he tried not too think too much about it.

But it sort of helped him because each time MJ would smile at him and he would get the overwhelming urge to blurt out how much he was in love with her, he’d simply take out his camera and focus on getting a picture of her rather than on the intense lurching of his stomach in response to her toothy smile.

Whilst taking pictures of her may have helped him stop confessing his feelings in the moment, in the long-term it did nothing to stop his feelings for her. So instead he just carried on taking various pictures of her whilst he waited out the rest of high school so he could go to college and hopefully not be so fixated on her anymore.

 

* * *

**_Peter and MJ_ **

 

Come the start of senior year MJ continued to draw/paint portraits of Peter to help cope with her crush on him whilst he continued to take photographs of her on his various cameras with the pair unaware of the intentions behind the other’s habit and both just hoping they could hang on for the last few months left of high school without saying anything stupid that could ruin everything.

They continued on with the routine through the term, the days until they could both be done with high school seeming to lag, until Thanos and his followers had landed on earth in search of Infinity Stones and Peter being Peter, had gone off to fight in a war he was too young to be fighting in because he simply couldn’t stand by.

In Peter’s absence, the frequency of MJ’s sketching and painting had grown exponentially. She was almost always drawing Peter, even when in class when she should’ve been paying attention to what the teacher was saying.

Her obsession with drawing Peter had further intensified when half of the earth’s population had mysteriously vanished and months had gone by without Peter’s return meaning he may have been one of the people to vanish.

Her drawing shifted from being about coping with a simple crush to coping with her grief at having lost someone she’d finally admitted to herself she loved not long after he’d initially left to fight.

For Peter, he couldn’t keep on photographing MJ whilst he was away from her and away from home fighting in the war that ensued upon Thanos’ arrival. So to cope with being away from her, he’d taken a single, wallet-sized photograph of MJ he’d taken only a few months ago during the summer of their junior year where she was sat out in the sun, her face practically glowing.

He would often look over the photograph wistfully whilst he sat in some spaceship or the other travelling to find Thanos and ultimately stop him. The photograph gave him the strength to carry on. It reminded him of why he’d left home and all he knew when the fight had come to earth- to protect those he loved and cared about.

And when Thanos had won after collecting all the infinity stones and Peter had felt a weird sense of dread, his Spidey senses on high alert, he’d scrambled to fish the photograph out of where he’d stuffed it into his suit, using the last bit of his strength and will power to hang on for just a second longer so he could see her face one last time before he was wiped off the face of the universe.

Months for MJ, and an unknown quantity of time with the concept of time being null in the soul stone for Peter, passed where the two were separated.

MJ continued to furiously draw and paint, her school work and other commitments suffering because of how focused she was on making portraits of Peter to the point where her parents had noticed and decided to take her for grief counselling, though her obsession remained.

There was nothing tangible within the realm of the soul stone so Peter couldn’t physically touch the photograph of MJ he’d carried with him but the photograph was etched into his memory in great detail. And though he may been frightened about where he was and if he would ever be able to go back home, thinking of the photograph and the details of MJ’s face he’d captured in it helped to ground him and stopped him spiralling.

Approximately five months passed before Thanos was defeated by what was left of the earth’s mightiest heroes and Peter was able to come home.

He’d been dropped off at his apartment in Queens by Tony into the waiting arms of his weeping, relieved aunt. He had stayed at the apartment for nearly five hours, him and May simply holding tightly onto each other before he’d eventually gotten up, grabbed Ben’s old film camera and headed to MJ’s apartment.

When news of Peter’s return had reached Peter courtesy of Ned, MJ had gathered up her favorite of the portraits of Peter she’d drawn and painted and shoved them into a backpack. She was headed out of her apartment with Peter’s apartment as the intended destination when she’d opened the front door to find him already there, waiting.

They stood watching each other for a long stretch of time. Neither moving or saying a word.

Eventually Peter was first to move. He raised his camera up to face MJ and had quickly captured the relief and joy on her face.

Then MJ had taken his hand in hers and pulled him into the apartment and to her bedroom. After closing the door she’d pushed him onto the chair by her window and got out a sketch pad then started drawing him as he sat completely still, the sun shining into her room framing his features.

When Peter thought he was okay to move again once MJ had eventually put the pad down, he moved to sit next to her where she was on the bed. He exhaled loudly then turned to her, “I love you.”

The declaration was stated so simply and matter of factly that it took Michelle’s breath away. Her words were caught in her throat and she found herself unable to speak so she instead got up and pulled a large wooden box from under her bed.

Without saying a word she opened the box and showed Peter all the drawings and paintings she’d made over the years that she’d kept in her room; the rest were up in the attic in various boxes.

Peter took the time to look over each one intently without saying a word then he moved to sit back on the bed once he was done and waited for MJ to say something.

MJ cleared her throat, finally finding her words again, “I’ve been drawing and painting you for nearly as long as I’ve known you. I know that’s weird and creepy, I’m sorry. I just- I had so many feelings directed at you and I was so overwhelmed by them and this was my only outlet.” She took a deep breath in and out after getting all those words out as quickly as she could.

Peter took her hand in his own before speaking, “I’ve been taking so many pictures of you with all my cameras for a few years now. It was the only outlet I had for  _my_  feelings.”

MJ looked up from her lap at him, a look of slight disbelief marring her features.

“I would show you but I brought my film camera not my digital- oh wait,” Peter paused to grab his phone out of his pocket. May had kept it and kept up bill payments on it in hopes that he would one day return. Peter put in his password and opened his gallery then turned the screen so MJ could see. “Look, it’s mostly just you. You reading, you giving me the middle finger, you drinking tea, you drawing, you writing…just  _you_.”

Peter gave MJ a small, embarrassed smile when she looked up from the phone to look at him.

MJ didn’t say anything. She only leaned forward to press her lips against him in an unsteady, unsure kiss which was immediately returned by Peter until she pulled away slightly after too short a time.

“I love you,” MJ breathed out against Peter’s lips.

This time Peter was the one to connect their lips, the kiss this time much more assured and searing.

They moved to lie on her bed on their sides, facing each other as they continued to kiss languidly. After what felt like hours passed they eventually pulled away to stare at each other, with Peter’s hand slowly stroking MJ’s hip.

They spent the next few hours whilst MJ’s parents were at work talking, catching up on not just the months missed, but on the years of feelings and a potential relationship missed.

Peter was now lying on his back with MJ slipping in and out of consciousness with her head laying on his chest when Peter spoke in a quiet whisper, “What we both did to cope with our feelings is actually really,  _really_ , creepy when you think about it.”

“Love makes you do weird things,” MJ sleepily mumbled into his chest before finally giving into the lull of sleep.

From then on they became Peter and MJ. And though they didn’t need to use drawing or photography as an outlet to cope with their overwhelming feelings, they still both utilised it as a way to express their feelings for the other.

Throughout the rest of their senior year, all throughout college and the time after they graduated when they moved in together with Peter working at Stark Industries whilst MJ was in grad school, they continued to draw and photograph each other.

On their wedding day they had slipped out of their reception early, the guests assuming the couple was eager to be alone and start the honeymoon early, to go back to their small apartment where Peter had taken an array of photographs of MJ both in and out of her wedding dress all for himself and MJ had drawn Peter in his tux.

When years had passed and the two had children, a boy and a girl, they both now had additional subjects for their portraits and would draw or photograph their children as well as each other. They had even more subjects in their old age when the grandchildren had come.

Their love endured with the passage of time, as had their habits of drawing or photographing the other. All the way until death.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi it me again, hope you enjoyed this latest piece! This is another more descriptive and less dialogue-heavy piece, I'm just practising a different writing style so thanks for being patient with me. As always, comments and kudos are highly appreciated!!
> 
> Find me @tvfanatic97-2 on tumblr and @tvfanatic97 on twitter x


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